Thief in the Night or The Strange Case of the Missing Millennium

4. The amazing Micah

beginning to end. All by themselves, they could have been sufficient to prove the mission of the Messiah of the last days. This is why I was tempted to call the prophet who gave them, ‘The Amazing Micah’.

In almost the first words of his first chapter, Micah says:

“For, behold, the Lord cometh forth out of his place, and will come down, and tread upon the high places of the earth.”¹

I found that Bahá’u’lláh fulfilled this verse, both symbolically and actually, concerning these ‘high’ places.

Symbolically: He walked in the land made holy by the feet of Abraham. He was exiled to Israel, a land considered holy by the Jews, Christians and Muslims. He walked where the feet of Christ and the prophets of old had walked.

Actually: He spent many months in prayer and meditation in the mountains of Kurdistán in ‘Iráq, prior to his public declaration of his mission. In the last years of his life, he walked on the side of Mount Carmel, called the ‘mountain of God’, the ‘nest of the prophets’, [and] the ‘snow white place’.

There, on that sacred mountain, above the Cave of Elijah, Bahá’u’lláh wrote the words:

“Call out to Zion, O Carmel, and announce the joyful tidings: He that was hidden from mortal eyes is come!”²

In his next chapter, Micah prophesies as follows:

“I will surely assemble, O Jacob, all of thee; I will surely gather the remnant of Israel; I will put them together … as the flock in the midst of their fold …”³

I had already learned that this prophecy began its fulfilment in 1844, the exact year of the beginning of Bahá’u’lláh’s Faith. In 1844 the Edict of Toleration was signed, permitting the

descendants of Jacob to return to Israel with freedom and security after twelve centuries of separation.

Following the appearance of Bahá’u’lláh himself in the land of Israel, the Jews began to return in greater numbers to the Holy Land, until, in the year 1948, the state of Israel itself was formed.

Bahá’u’lláh himself prophesied that this great event would take place in the not too distant future. Carl Alpert, a prolific writer on Zionism, spoke of this prophecy of Bahá’u’lláh. In his article in The Reconstructionist, I found the following: “While still in his Turkish jail in Acre, more than 75 years ago, Bahá’u’lláh wrote: ‘The outcasts of Israel shall gather and create a state that will become the envy and admiration of both their friends and their enemies, and outwardly and spiritually they will attain to such glory that their 2,000 years of abasement will be forgotten.’”¹

To return to Micah, there can be no doubt that he is speaking of the second coming of Christ, and not the first. For he continues his prophecy, saying that it will take place in the last days:

“But in the last days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and people shall flow unto it.”²

I visited the shrine where the herald of Bahá’u’lláh’s Faith is entombed on the side of Mount Carmel in Israel. I also visited the world administrative centre of his Faith that is established on the side of this same mountain. I was an eye-witness to the crowds that ‘flow unto it’ every day. While investigating the history of this area, in order to complete this book, I witnessed a throng of nearly two thousand people flow in and out of these sacred places in less than three hours.

I learned that it goes on day after day. People come from all parts of the world; in fact, from ‘the ends of earth’.

In this same chapter, Micah promises that in these last days from this ‘house of the Lord’ both the ‘law shall go forth’ as well as the ‘word of the Lord’. When the truth of the Messiah is known, men shall ‘beat their swords into ploughshares’.

While in Israel, I learned that the ‘law’ of Bahá’u’lláh now ‘goes forth’ to over 250 countries of the earth where his followers reside; and that in over 8,000 centres of the world these followers consider Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings to be the ‘word of the Lord’. [1991—190 countries, 45 territories and about 130,000 localities.]

I walked on the site of the future Universal House of Justice of Bahá’u’lláh’s Faith, from which the ‘law’ will go ‘forth’ to the National and Local Houses of Justice in all parts of the planet. (The Universal House was elected in 1963.)

In these chapters, Micah foretells both the first and second coming of Christ, prophesying that He will come first from Bethlehem and second from Assyria. That following the first coming, great suffering and tribulation will fall upon the children of Israel:

“Therefore shall Zion for your sake be ploughed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps …”¹

In ad 70, Jerusalem was destroyed by the Roman Titus. In ad 132 the Roman Emperor Hadrian crushed the soldiers of Bar Kochba and ploughed under the site of the city.

Then, says Micah, of the Messiah from Bethlehem:

“Therefore will he give them up, until the time that she which travaileth hath brought forth; then the remnant of his brethren shall return unto the children of Israel.”²

Micah has just pointed out that ‘she which travaileth’ is the daughter of Zion. Where did she bring forth? Micah foretold this, too, saying:

“… thou shalt go even to Babylon: there shalt thou be delivered …”¹

In that day, Micah says of the Messiah:

“… shall he be great unto the ends of the earth.”²

And Micah foretells that when the Messiah comes the second time, this time from Assyria, it shall bring about the day of the one fold and one shepherd when:

“… nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”³

Millennial Bible scholars were well aware of this special promise for Assyria and Elam and Persia, but they could not understand it. Reverend H. Bonar, speaking as one of fourteen Christian clergymen at a special conference on the Second Coming of Christ called Our God Shall Come, declared: “There is another nation reserved for blessing and restoration. Elam. I take these as the overlooked specimens of a certain class of God’s doings in the latter days, when the whole earth is given to Christ for His inheritance.” Bonar accepts these prophecies concerning Assyria, Elam and Persia, although, as he says, “I cannot venture on giving any reason why Elam, or Assyria, should be so especially blessed in the latter days …”⁴

Both Christ and Micah gave the same identical signs for this day of His return. Christ said He would come from the East (Assyria) in a day when:

“The good man is perished out of the earth: and there is none upright among men; … they hunt every man his brother with a net.

That they may do evil with both hands earnestly, the

the prince asketh, and the judge asketh for a reward; and the great man, he uttereth his mischievous desire … the best of them is a brier: the most upright is sharper than a thorn hedge …”¹

Christ said that this was the day to ‘Watch!’ for the Lord would come as a ‘thief’ and ‘break up’ the house of the faithless. Micah said that this hour was:

“the day of thy watchmen and thy visitation cometh …”²

Micah then let loose an astonishing downpour of prophecy. He foretold the exact steps by which the Lord would come to Israel, and the things that would befall Him. No detective had a clearer set of clues. Micah promised that:

1. He would come from Assyria.

2. He would come from the fortified cities.

3. He would come from a fortress to a river.

4. He would come from sea to sea.

5. He would come from mountain to mountain.

6. The land to which he came would be desolate.

7. He would feed his flock in the midst of Mount Carmel.

8. He would work his wonders for a period equal to the days which the Jews spent coming out of Egypt.

Frankly, I felt that a fulfilment of these prophecies would be sufficient by itself to establish the authenticity of the Messiah, for in addition to these eight prophesies, Bahá’u’lláh had also fulfilled Micah’s prophesies that the Messiah must:

1. Come as a Messenger of God and tread upon the high places of the earth.

2. Appear in the day when the children of Israel would be gathered into their own land.

3. Establish his house in the mountain.

4. Draw the people to it in a flow of love.

5. Send forth His love from that mountain.

6. Go to Babylon.

7. Withdraw from the city.

8. Dwell in the wilderness and the field.

9. Give birth in Babylon that would redeem the children of Israel.

No wonder I called him the ‘Amazing Micah’. I now felt that if Bahá’u’lláh also fulfilled these eight additional prophecies, I might indeed be coming to the end of my search. I had to admit that I had already assembled a powerful array of evidence pointing to a solution of The case of the missing millennium.